Call for submissions to the Vernon L. Smith Young Talent Award

The Society for Experimental Finance calls for submissions to the 2024 Vernon L. Smith Young Talent Award, which will award two times $4,000 for the best research proposals in finance using experimental methodology. We thank Chapman University for sponsoring the prize money in 2024. To apply for the VSYA, please submit a proposal for an experimental research project via the application form (link) and send the completed application form to office@expfin.org with the subject “VSYA24” and the applicant’s name.  

Requirements

• The following holds for all authors. Your project is eligible for assessment if 1) you have received your PhD after 2018 or have no PhD yet, 2) you have an affiliation with a University or other research institution, and 3) you are a SEF member. (Membership in the SEF is free; just register by clicking the login symbol on the top right of this page)
• Your project’s research question needs to be set in a finance context, such as financial economics, corporate finance, household finance, or sustainable finance.
• Your proposal should describe a proper experiment, with a minimum of two treatments organized as a randomized control trial (no quasi-experiment, comparing two distinct groups of participants exposed to the same stimuli, and no demonstration, comparing outcomes from one environment/task to theoretical benchmarks).
• The funds need to be earmarked for running the experimental project that was submitted. Any resulting publication must acknowledge funding from the SEF through the VSYA.

Find more information in the application form.

How do we determine the winners? After screening the submissions for eligibility, we forward the anonymized application form to the panel members. The panel members are Camelia Kuhnen (University of South Carolina), Nobuyuki Hanaki (Osaka University), Christine Laudenbach (Goethe University), and Stefan Palan (University of Graz). They evaluate the proposals and select the winners.

Deadline for submission: November 15, 2025.

Check out the awards page for past year’s award winners!